2009 in review: Books

Last entry I reviewed my 2009 in travel. This time (for the fourth year), books. Here's a list of the books I read in 2009, followed by some stats:

1. The Tales of Beedle the Bard - J.K. Rowling

2. Once Removed - Neil Finn & Mark Smith

3. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
4. Charlotte's Web - E.B. White
5. Stuart Little - E.B. White

6. Sad American Mythology - Ryan Adams

7. The Little Book - Selden Edwards

8. Feathers - Jacqueline Woodson

9. Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins - Emma Donoghue

10. Stalking Irish Madness - Patrick Tracey

11. Scattershot - David Lovelace

12. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane - Kate DiCamillo

13. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

14. Voluntary Madness - Norah Vincent

15. The Trumpet of the Swan - E.B. White

16. R.E.M.: Hello - David Belisle & Michael Stipe

17. The World in Six Songs - Daniel J. Levitin

18. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

19. Long Way Down - Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman

20. Three Willows - Ann Brashares

21. When Will There Be Good News? - Kate Atkinson

22. King Dork - Frank Portman

23. Coop - Michael Perry

24. A Day on Skates: The Story of a Dutch Picnic - Hilda Van Stockum

25. That Lass o' Lowrie's - Frances Hodgson Burnett

26. The View From Mount Joy - Lorna Landvik

27. The Americans - Robert Frank

28. Amsterdam - Ian McEwan

29. The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd

30. Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri

31. Twilight - Stephenie Meyer

32. New Moon - Stephenie Meyer

33. Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer

34. Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer

35. In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom - Qanta A. Ahmed, MD

36. Hands of My Father - Myron Uhlberg

37. Snark - David Denby

38. The Girl Who Could Fly - Victoria Forester

39. And Both Were Young - Madeleine L'Engle

40. An Acceptable Time - Madeleine L'Engle

41. Travels With Charley - John Steinbeck

42. Do Polar Bears Get Lonely? - NewScientist

43. The Small Rain - Madeleine L'Engle

44. A Severed Wasp - Madeleine L'Engle

45. Hiding in the Spotlight - Greg Dawson

46. The Crow Road - Iain Banks

47. Under Milk Wood - Dylan Thomas

48. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling

49. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling

50. The Hour I First Believed - Wally Lamb

51. The Host - Stephenie Meyer

52. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

53. A Corner of the Universe - Ann M. Martin

54. Angels & Insects - A.S. Byatt

55. The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet - Neil DeGrasse Tyson

56. An Echo in the Bone - Diana Gabaldon

57. Agnes Cecelia - Maria Gripe

58. A Little Princess - Frances Hodgson Burnett

59. Outlander - Diana Gabaldon

60. Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon

61. Voyager - Diana Gabaldon

62. Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon

63. Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon

64. A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon

65. A Widow for One Year - John Irving

66. Nothing But Ghosts - Beth Kephart

67. Everything Beautiful in the World - Lisa Levchuk

68. The Mistress's Daughter - A.M. Homes

69. The Areas of My Expertise - John Hodgman

70. The Birthing House - Christopher Ransom

71. Twilight Children - Torey Hayden

72. Joys of Love - Madeleine L'Engle

73. American on Purpose - Craig Ferguson

74. Julie and Julia - Julie Powell

75. Moon Palace - Paul Auster

76. A Gate at the Stairs - Lorrie Moore

Total books read: 76. 

I read one fewer book in 2009 than I did in 2008.

By male authors: 30 (40%) 

By female authors: 45 (59%) 

By both: 1 (0.1%)

Previously read: 15 (20% - up from 2008's 4%)
Marketed for children/teens: 20 (26% - yow!)
Fiction: 55 (72%) Nonfiction: 21 (28%)
In 2009, unlike 2008, fiction ruled.  


Looking at these statistics, it's clear: for much of 2009 I was in the mood for light, simple, familiar, made-up stories.  Interesting.  (Of course, I didn't count all the New Yorkers I read.)  Maybe the busier I am with other things, the less I want to think deeply about what I'm reading.  Or, my patience is growing shorter as I get older?  I'm going to try to challenge myself a little more in 2010.  

You should definitely read: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and Coop by Michael Perry.  I was a bit late getting to The Poisonwood Bible, and I'm sorry I waited so long to read this enthralling book.  It is fiction, but not light or simple.  Coop is an excellent memoir; the latest in a line of excellent memoirs by Michael Perry.   He's one of the folks who make me glad to be a Wisconsinite, even if my hometown an hour's drive from Chicago bears little resemblance to his. 

Don't bother reading: The Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer.  I mean, unless you have a sneaking suspicion you might enjoy it.  Then go ahead, but be warned that they're like crack.  If crack included some awesomely horrible dialogue.  Also, prepare to spend a good week or two afterward supremely frustrated because Meyer has no current plans to finish her draft of Midnight Sun, which is Twilight from Edward's perspective.  Arg!  

2009 in review: Travel

Happy new year! This is the first in a series of posts looking back at stuff I did a lot in 2009. Reading, traveling ... and seeing music. So, here we go, with travel:

States (and districts of Columbia) visited (not counting layovers):  10
Indiana, Maryland, Washington D.C., Illinois, California, Nevada, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Tennessee

New States:  0
Wow, bad showing on the new states front this year.  I didn't cross a single one off the list.  Which means...  

States left before I reach 50:  (still) 7
Louisiana, Maine, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Rhode Island.  I was hoping to check Montana off in early 2010, but I don't think that's going to work out.  I still have hopes of hitting Maine sometime this year, though.  Maybe a business trip to North Dakota.  What else?  I'll have to wait and see.  Overall, though, I don't feel too badly about my failures in the new state field.  Because...

Countries visited: 5
England, Spain, Portugal, Italy, The Netherlands.  And all of them were new!  As always, my goal for 2010 is at least one more.  Maybe another new continent?

A note about travel this decade:

If you consider the decade to be "years in which the first numeral was 2 and the third numeral was 0," which most people seem to be doing, this was a huge travel decade for me.  Understandable, for me it spanned ages 20-30.  But before the year 2000, I had never been to a country outside the U.S.  Not even Canada.  Now I've visited sixteen countries on four continents: not too shabby.  Before 2000, I'd been to thirteen states.  Plenty of progress there, too, reaching forty-three.  

I don't like ranking best vacation spots or best trips; I see no need for those kinds of comparisons.  I've kept a blog since 2005, which means many of my experiences are already documented.  However, one earlier trip really deserves a mention: Moscow and Siberia, August 2001.  I will write about that sometime.  

The Penpals

Have I blogged about the series of books Allison and I wrote in elementary school?  I just found my copies upstairs.  Yes, Allison and I were authors at a young age.  Each of us wrote our own book to start, structured as a series of letters between a pair of penpals.  Subsequent tomes united our penpal characters and their adventures.  In fact, volume two was cleverly entitled Penpals II: United.  (Volume three, Penpals III: United Again.  Volume four, Penpals #4: One Last Time.)

I know we were children when we wrote these - volume two would have been written around fourth grade - but reading parts of them now is nonetheless horribly embarrassing.  I'm mostly embarrassed for my ten-year-old self, who thought the stories were hip and clever.  (Our friends seemed to think so, but what did they know?  They were in elementary school.)  We illustrated the books with colored-pencil depictions of photographs, both entertaining and cringeworthy today.      

By Penpals II: United, my characters - Anni and Courtney - were fifteen.  They'd spent some time out of contact, while Courtney's family was in witness protection because her dad secretly worked with the FBI to bring down a big drug dealer.  But, luckily, two years later the police "caught the gang."  Whew!  So long, witness protection!

Meanwhile, Anni was still living in San Francisco, and had acquired a 17-year-old superstar actor boyfriend named Brent Rockne.  Soon Courtney flew out to visit Anni's family for Christmas.  They went to Aspen, where they met up with Allison's penpal characters Jenni and Sabrina.  Then everyone went back to California.  And somewhere in there, Brent Rockne took the girls on a little ski adventure.  Which was written up in a teen magazine!  Check out the article below.  The sentences span across the photo, rather than being separated into columns.  That's how all the best magazines do it.

Where do I begin?  How about with the fact that Brent Rockne looks like a sketchy thirty-something dude?  Or the fact that he's groping Anni's chest?  And the restaurant.  F'Reau D'Plaur?  I clearly had some vague notions about the French language, but none of the details.  Then there's the article itself.  Ski vail?  You may be aware of the great skiing available at Vail in Colorado, but this is the more exclusive "Ski vail" in California.  Where seventeen-year-old actors can be alone with a foursome of fifteen-year-old and thirteen-year-old girls: no problem!  At least I didn't make him eighteen.  Not then, anyway.  

The rest is just like this.  Even better, in many cases!  Sometime I'm going to go through the pictures and write down every saying I drew on t-shirts and sweatshirts.  I was really into that as a fashion statement in 1991.

Oh, and rent SURF NITES.  I hear it was radical.

Meet me here at dawn

Second City 24-hour Letters to Santa Benefit, year seven!  December 15th-16th from 6 p.m. - 6 p.m.  Here's the annual incomplete timeline:

7:40 p.m.: Jeff Tweedy sings "Remember the Mountain Bed" to the super-awesome Tami Sagher.  He's playing a lovely Kel Kroydon guitar with peacocks on it.

9:53 p.m.: There is improv.

10:31 p.m.: Gerald Dowd and Robbie Fulks.  Robbie's performance of the 2009 Rap of the Dead was amazing, as it is every year I've gotten to see it.

12:41 a.m.: Horatio Sanz and Matt Walsh from UCB, joined by TJ.

1:48 a.m.: Slow-motion reenactment of one minute from the greatest rock concert ever.

3:24 a.m.: Everyone joins the Flash Mob Marching Band, marching around the third floor of Piper's Alley

3:39 a.m.: More improv.  I just remember that this woman was supposed to be flying.

6:13 a.m.: Bonnie "Prince" Billy plays an enchanting early-morning set.

8:26 a.m.: The babies (and children) perform a scene together.

9:00 a.m.: It's a pyramid of comedy!  And a stray baby left in the background.

10:12 a.m.: Town Parade, cut short this year.  We got the professions, but no scene!  I was looking forward to seeing the town cult enthusiast in action.

11:14 a.m.: More improv.

12:24 p.m.: Nina Nastasia (and some dry ice in the background).

1:59 p.m.: Mountain Goats.  (That Starbucks cup saw some action.)

3:02 p.m.: Bear attack.

3:54 p.m.: Champagne in honor of Second City's 50th anniversary joins the empty Red Bull and Starbucks containers on our table.  Not pictured: 5 Hour Energy vial, free cheesecake.

4:36 p.m.: The Blisters.  It was their seventh year at the benefit, too.

And that took us nearly to the end.  All of the 24-hour people joined the comedians (and John Darnielle) on stage for the last twenty minutes for the traditional game of freeze tag, then two minutes of dancing, and it was over for another year.  Weirdly jumbled memories of Anne Frank and Jesus making out in heaven, chefs who are turned on by shrimp, and guys who communicate with their fathers via hobo symbols will tide me over until 2010.

The next night, Sooz and I went to see Andrew Bird's final Gezelligheid show at the Fourth Presbyterian Church.  The church looked amazing.  Ryan did an excellent job with the lights, which combined with the music to create a unique atmosphere.  I enjoyed hearing much of Andrew's lesser-played instrumental material, as well as some choice covers like Cass McCombs's "Meet Me Here at Dawn."  With the snow outside and coziness inside, my Christmas spirit was officially boosted.

There's much to be thankful for this holiday season, and I love spending so much time with friends.  After more social activities Friday night and Saturday afternoon, though, I'll admit that I'm thankful for the chance to relax at home tonight with some Christmas cookies, Christmas music, and a huge stack of books.

Also see:
Letters to Santa 2008
Letters to Santa 2007
Letters to Santa 2006
Letters to Santa 2005

Best of Pa Ingalls

Inspired by an article in The New Yorker, lately I've been rereading my favorite Laura Ingalls Wilder books.  I've always been a fan of Pa's colorful exclamations, so I decided to compile some favorites here:

"You're only a little half-pint of cider half drunk up, but by Jinks! you're as strong as a little French horse!"
-Little House in the Big Woods, after Laura scrambled over the wood box with Mary in tow

"Hurry!  I'm hungry as a wolf!"
-Little House on the Prairie, encouraging Laura and Mary to help him skin a rabbit

"Cattle, by George!"
-Little House on the Prairie, hearing a strange, low, distant sound

"Now, by the Great Horn Spoon, I'll milk her!"
-Little House on the Prairie, after being kicked by his cow

"Jiminy crickets!  It's raining fish-hooks and hammer handles!"

-On the Banks of Plum Creek, during a hard rain

"Can't see a thing!  It's dark as a stack of black cats!"

-On the Banks of Plum Creek, on a particularly dark night

"Great weasels in the cash box!  You've got to be shitting me!"
-On the Banks of Plum Creek, when the grasshoppers returned for the second year

"Gosh all hemlock! but it's growing cold fast!"
-The Long Winter, on a chilly pre-blizzard night

"Jerusalem crickets!  This is a humdinger!"
-The Long Winter, on the first morning of a notable storm

"Well I'll be a prideful waltzing whoremaster; if it isn't the Christmas turkey!"
-The Long Winter, upon the long-awaited delivery of the Christmas barrel

Pa had such a way with words.

This machine produces denim

There's a big, bad snowstorm rolling into town tonight.  But on Monday night, the eve of the storm, I was part of a sellout crowd that found a port at the High Noon Saloon with the Dave Rawlings Machine.  My background knowledge of the band amounted to little more than tangential song associations, a brief guest appearance by David Rawlings at Largo, and the new album I only managed to play once before the concert.  Multiple glowing reviews from a certain friend were enough, however, to convince me this was a show I ought to check out.

The night got off to an energetic start with "Monkey and the Engineer," soon followed by a seamless melding of "Candyman" and "Dear Landlord."  Gillian pointed out that not every brain would naturally connect those two songs, but clearly David Rawlings has got what it takes.  The show continued for nearly two and a half hours; more bang for my buck than I'm used to getting from local shows.  Ketch Secor, Willie Watson, and Morgan Jahnig from Old Crow Medicine Show were on stage for the majority of that time, adding wonderful vocal and instrumental accompaniments ... and making me think that next time OCMS is in town, I might want to get on that.

Many details made an impression on me over the course of the evening.  David and Gillian's harmonies were superb, blending together into one full voice.  Dave's fingerpicking skills are beyond my comprehension.  It was fun to watch the interactions between Ketch and Dave, whether Ketch was on fiddle, harmonica, or vocals.  The crowd was enthusiastic without veering over to obnoxious (always a danger at a bar), and there was lots of friendly engagement from the stage.  There was a tale about Santa Cruz and a trail of toilet paper.  The band's dinner at the Eldorado Grill inspired the addition of "Diamond Joe," to the setlist, which prompted a story about Ramblin' Jack Elliott's 35-minute version of the song.  Gillian explained that the only thing they know about the Rawlings Machine so far is that it wears denim ... in fact, it may produce denim.  Some of that denim was in danger Monday night, as Dave kept nearly losing his pants.  A good samaritan in front of me took off his own belt and passed it forward, where it was received with gratitude and donned without delay.  "I didn't want to give it to you," confessed the woman up front who'd handed the belt over.  I could sympathize.

We heard more songs than I can recall now.  A rollicking gospel tune, "He Will Set Your Fields On Fire." "Cortez the Killer" may soon rival "Ring of Fire" as the song I've seen covered the most times.  Although twice I think Dave Rawlings has been involved, so perhaps I'm overestimating.  During one of the periods when the OCMS guys left the stage to just Dave and Gill, Dave announced that it was time for Gillian to sing a song.  "We don't do this one too much, but we're going to play it for you tonight.  We've had a lot of requests for it.  I mean ... not from you guys.  From other people who won't get to hear it."  That song was "Wrecking Ball."  

After the main set the band returned for an encore, which included "Queen Jane Approximately," "To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High)" and Gillian's "Look at Miss Ohio."  The last song (because unlike some audience members, Dave noted, they know how to pace a set) was "The Weight."  Gillian took the first verse, then Dave, then Willie, then Ketch, then all four together.  I couldn't imagine a more satisfying ending to the show.  Except, maybe, for the second encore.  The four vocalists returned to the stage and gathered around one microphone sans instruments for "Didn't Leave Nobody But the Baby" - accompanied by the crowd on stomp percussion.

"We've been watching the weather," Dave remarked toward the end of the night.  "We play tomorrow in Minneapolis ... and then in Omaha."  Laughter and shouts of "good luck!" rang out.  When he explained that they planned to blow out of town that night, trying to get to Minneapolis before things got bad, the crowd protested loudly.   Dave laughed.  "Or we could stay and play here tomorrow, too," he suggested.  "Just stick around."  Even in a blizzard, I guarantee they'd have an audience.

California capper

The final leg of my November on the go was the Beverly Hills business trip.  Despite weekend work hours that had me gone from 5:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., I was too stubborn to omit any of my favorite L.A. activities from the program.  Without going into exactly how little sleep I got each night, I will say that turning thirty hasn't immediately turned me into an old lady.

And ah, how much we packed in!  Pinkberry at Farmer's Market, ogling New Moon fans at the Grove and ArcLight, a trip to Amoeba.  Friday night I saw my first official Jon Brion show at the Coronet.  A long main set (which included a Led Zeppelin collaboration with John Paul Jones) gave way to a long second set in the Little Room.  I've seen performances in the Little Room before, but never from one of the front tables.  It's certainly a unique experience to be mere feet away from these performers on their scarcely-raised platform.  The Punch Brothers were the Little Room guests that night, and the majority of the set took place with the only trace of Jon being his laughter and requests from the bar.  My favorite songs were Radiohead's "2+2=5," and "Lovefool" by The Cardigans.  I swear, I had no idea knew every word to that song ... especially after all these years.  Toward the end, the Punch Brothers, Fiona Apple, Jon Brion, and Benmont Tench all perched on the tiny stage at once.  I wonder what the record is.

Saturday night, we saw the always-great Paul F. Tompkins show.  His guests were Andy Richter and Paget Brewster.  (Andy Richter Controls the Universe flashback!)  There was even a surprise cameo by Maria Thayer ... or, as I think of her, Sexy Ms. Magoo.  After PFT, we tracked down the Kogi truck for a (very) late dinner.  Short rib burrito: always worth the wait in line.  One of these days I'll save room for dessert.

Sunday, U picked me up and we went straight to the Grove for the Christmas tree lighting.  However, it soon became clear that this would involve a huge crowd and lots of waiting.  We made a break for the surprisingly-busy Farmer's Market for coffee instead.   After a visit to the Urban Light display at LACMA, we ended the evening with much-anticipated meal from Mozza2Go.  It turns out there is no meat in a ginger pig.  Probably a good thing, as we ordered it from the dessert menu.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!